Category «Courts»

Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

MIT News: “Mixed appraisals of one of the internet’s major resources, Wikipedia, are reflected in the slightly dystopian article “List of Wikipedia Scandals.” Yet billions of users routinely flock to the online, anonymously editable, encyclopedic knowledge bank for just about everything. How this unauthoritative source influences our discourse and decisions is hard to reliably trace. …

Subjects: Courts, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Will the Biggest Publisher in the United States Get Even Bigger?

The New York Times – “When the largest publisher in the country, Penguin Random House, struck a deal in the fall of 2020 to acquire its rival Simon & Schuster, publishing executives and antitrust experts predicted that the merger would draw intense scrutiny from government regulators. The merger would dramatically alter the literary landscape, shrinking …

Subjects: Courts, Economy, Government Documents, Legal Research, Libraries

Justice Department investigating data breach of federal court system

Politico: “House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told fellow lawmakers that “three hostile foreign actors” attacked the U.S. Courts’ document filing system as part of a breach in early 2020 causing a “system security failure.” The comments — at a committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department’s National Security Division — were the …

Subjects: Congress, Courts, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Records, Government Documents, Legal Research

New LibGuide tracks response to the Roe v. Wade Dobbs v. Jackson decision

“I’ve created a new LibGuide to compile federal statements/actions to track the response to the Roe v. Wade/Dobbs v. Jackson decision. I’m being a bit more selective with this guide than some earlier guides, but please feel free to suggest resources I may have omitted or missed.” [Kelly L. Smith, Government Information Librarian, Librarian for …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Courts, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Libraries, Privacy

The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away

The New York Times – “These controls, which are buried inside products from Apple, Google, Meta and others, make us share more data than we need to…Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft generally want us to leave some default settings on, purportedly to train their algorithms and catch bugs, which then make their products easier …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, E-Commerce, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Medicine, Privacy, Search Engines

John Roberts Was Lobbying Kavanaugh to Save Roe. Then the Draft Opinion Leaked

Rolling Stone – A new report says the leak, which conservatives insist was the work of a rogue liberal, actually helped get Roe overturned: “Immediately after the draft Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was released, conservatives began bleating about how the leak was the work of a nefarious liberal clerk who wanted …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research

Roe V. Wade Under Attack: Choosing Procedural Doctrines Over Fundamental Constitutional Rights

Grossi, Simona, Roe V. Wade Under Attack: Choosing Procedural Doctrines Over Fundamental Constitutional Rights (April 2022). Loyola Law School, Los Angeles Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2022-04, 13 ConLawNOW 39 (2022), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4096417 “This Article details the Texas litigation on abortion rights in and out of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 and …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Legal Research

Restrictions on Contraception Could Set Women Back Generations

The New Yorker – “When the current Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last week, overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that sent chills through almost anyone who takes the personal freedoms of modern life for granted. …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Economy, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine, Privacy

The fight between authors and librarians tearing book lovers apart

Washington Post: “At the start of the pandemic, teachers and librarians pleaded with a prominent nonprofit to make it easier for kids at home to check out books from its digital library. The organization, called the Internet Archive, agreed. While it traditionally loaned out its more than a million digital books one at a time …

Subjects: Copyright, Courts, Digital Rights, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

AP-NORC poll: 2 in 3 in US favor term limits for justices

AP: “About 2 in 3 Americans say they favor term limits or a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices, according to a new poll that finds a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans saying they have “hardly any” confidence in the court. The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research

South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion

Washington Post: “Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling that overturned the right to abortion in June, South Carolina state senators introduced legislation that would make it illegal to “aid, abet or conspire with someone” to obtain an abortion. The bill aims to block more than abortion: Provisions would outlaw providing information over the internet or …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Health Care, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Medicine, Privacy